Organising your life

I realllllly want MR to make me one of these door tidies for inside our linen cupboard!

So I've been wanting to organise my life for, well, pretty much my whole teenage and adult life.  It just does not come naturally to me.  My sister inherited all the genes in that area and I managed to get all of both Mum and Dad's clutterbug genes, Dad's especially. 

I've been looking at decluttering sites and organising sites, pinning ideas to my 'I need to get organised...' pinterest board (a lot of which seems to revolve around pretty ways to store my ribbon collection...) and generally just making many lists and checking them off - somewhat slowly.  But it is progress.

I've liked the idea of a declutter your home calendar which lists a task to do each day.  I could do that! But all of the ones I have found seem to aimed at the northern hemisphere and just don't suit our seasons!  So I've decided to make my own.  In fact, I started tonight while watching a dreadful movie, continued it while watching the next movie which was only slightly less dreadful and did some more after that while watching some Olympics.  I would say I have got about three quarters of 365 days filled.

Some of the tasks repeat themselves fortnightly, like 'spend twenty minutes in a room that needs attention' and 'clear off the dining room table', some appear monthly like 'sort through and file one stack of paper work' and 'catch up on some ironing or handwashing' whilst some only appear less often like 'go through a craft supply pile' (which in actual fact should probably appear a lot more regularly) and then there's a few that only make their presence known once or twice a year such as 'clean out the gutters' or 'clean the oven'.  I decided to extend my calendar to a Home and Garden organising calendar mainly because gardening is something I am still learning about and I need reminding when it is time to fertilise, prune, plant etc.

Now I must pay credit, a lot of my inspiration has come from this helpful lady and her decluttering calendar.  But now I am asking all you lovely people out there for your ideas.  Not your everyday cleaning jobs like vacuum, washing and so forth, more those things that keep on getting put off or fit more into a declutter and organise category.  Things that you look at and think, gosh when did I last do that?  Or if you are already an organised person, things that you schedule in to your Spring cleaning each year. 

Do you have any tips that work for you?  I have found that the twenty-minute-tidy works quite well for me.  I set the timer on the oven for twenty minutes and then tidy until it goes off.  Sometimes I even set it for a second lot of twenty minutes!*


I'm really looking forward to hearing your ideas!!





  
* I know, I know, even I astound myself sometimes!